Thread by @znfrey

🔥 take from @saifedean

Somewhat agree and disagree

1/

https://twitter.com/saifedean/status/1371727688080240640

Electric cars are unaffordable for the majority of humanity.

Fact check: TRUE

However, this is also true for gasoline vehicles.

It's only in the affluent West that "everyone must have a vehicle" has been normalized.

2/

The general public has a distorted view of relative affordability of gasoline vs. EV vehicles because of massive subsidies, public and private, into EV development and production.

3/

As the Texas debacle shows, robust and reliable energy infrastructure is a harder problem than most people think.

Our electric grid stability was already degrading before "we" "decided" to convert our transportation infrastructure to run off the grid instead of fuel

4/

And gasoline *is* more energy-dense than the best battery technology.

Thermodynamics don't care about your Green Energy dreams

5/

I should add a disclaimer here that my day job is tangentially related to EVs. Views are my own and do not reflect my employer's etc.

I'm not opposed to EVs; I think eventually some sort of flex-fuel plug-in hybrid architecture will be the way to go

6/

But the energy and environmental tradeoffs of EVs are... poorly understood by the general public

Of *course* the auto manufactures are going to hype the benefits! They're in the business of selling cars!!

And good for them, because it provides engineers a good living.

7/

But you're not "Saving The Planet!™️" by driving a Prius, and you haven't been for 20+ years.

(Disclaimer: I do, in fact, drive a Prius. Just not to Save The Planet™️)

8/

re: horses.

"The actual workable alternative to gasoline cars is horses." - @saifedean

He's not wrong.

Horses are Lindy.

9/

I'm not a horse person. Nasty creatures that kick and bite. OK, maybe not *your* horse...

They *do* produce mountains of crap.

Upside: shoveling is good exercise.

10/

Before the "horseless carriage", major cities *did* stink to high Heaven because of mountains of horse crap.

CO2 and combustion particulates aren't the only forms of air pollution.

And sanitation matters if cities aren't going to be plague zones.

11/

Not going to touch the scare quotes around CO2.

Holy Science hath decreed that fossil fuel CO2 emissions are The Worst Possible Problem™️ and we're all gonna die miserably in (current year) + (5-15 years) unless we adopt (insert socio-political program here) RIGHT NOW!

12/

So I won't commit Climate Heresy in this thread.

I will point out that anthropogenic global warming isn't the only problem with fossil fuels.

Peak Oil is still real. Even if it's no longer a fashionable celebrity cause.

13/

Eventually, no matter what the thermodynamic advantages of gasoline are, it's not going to be cheap.

Remember that point about "workable alternatives to gasoline cars"? We'll want those.

14/

When does that happen?

Hell if I know. Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

But it's safe to predict that the unsustainable cannot be sustained forever.

15/

But, markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

That includes energy and transportation markets.

16/

So I'm not betting on massive shifts to horse power in the next (current year) + (5-15 years)

Which is good - breeding horses and expanding the set of people with horse skills takes time

Still, best get familiar with

* walking
* trains
* horses
* sailing (cc @EcoClipper)

17/

TL;DR

"Don't like gasoline cars? What are you gonna do, go back to using horses?"

Me unironically: "Yeah, I expect we will."

18/🧵end